


As The Days Stand Up On End

by roundthatcorner



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 19:53:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11088762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roundthatcorner/pseuds/roundthatcorner
Summary: George & Paul (& John) realizing each other, or failing to, 1958-1971.





	As The Days Stand Up On End

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this is taken from George's song 'Run of the Mill', which some surmise is about Paul. There are 9 sections and 9000 some words because even though John's POV isn't included, he is (by hook, by crook) the structuring force. The dates/locations/details/circumstances here range from pretty accurate to possibly entirely made up in my fevered imagination, so. 
> 
> This was written more or less in the order of iv, ii, vi, viii, iii, v, vii, ix, i, so one could alternately read it that way, for larks.
> 
> Kudos & comments and such are greatly appreciated, and for this I would especially get a kick out of people saying which their favorite section is! (if any, lol)

i) Hope Street/Mount Street, Liverpool, England – March 1958 ;

George is following about two steps behind Paul when he trips over one of the broken easels littering the courtyard, his hand shooting up to catch at the back of Paul's blazer.

“Alright?” Paul says, grinning back at him as he regains his footing. 

There are marks like cow paths in the grass between the doors, though George has never known any Inny students to make this particular passage, and the art students surely wouldn't be caught dead doing it. 

“Nearly broke me neck, that's all,” George responds, with the slow nonchalance he knows will get a laugh out of Paul. Paul snickers, shortly, his hand reaching for the door that marks the back entrance to the Art College.

“Wait...,” Paul says, more to himself than anyone. He turns around to George, giving him a brief appraising look before seeming to find him satisfactory and moving to attend to himself instead. George watches as he wipes his hands on the sides of his thighs, then unpins his badge from the front of his blazer and shoves it into his trouser pocket. His hand hovers for a moment over the knot of his tie and then he shucks it too, stuffing it alongside the badge and making sure even the tails of it are hidden from sight. 

In just his black blazer and white shirt, Paul looks cool, George thinks – well, maybe not cool like one of the bearded, _beat_ -ed art students and not cool like John in his chukka boots, but cool enough to get in the door, at least.

Paul still mustn't think so, because he starts in on his hair now, pulling a comb out and teasing and tucking it into place using muscle memory alone. Paul's hair is always falling about, which is a shame – George taught him how to use sugar water to stick it into shape, but Paul's dad blew a fuse over it when he saw, making Paul wash it right out. It's lingering wariness from the rationing or something, George thinks; old people can be funny that way, going on about the war as if it wasn't forever ago.

George reaches up to curl a last little tendril of Paul's hair into the mass of it as Paul absently fiddles with the buttons on the cuffs of his blazer. He thinks about asking Paul if there is a pretty college girl he is looking to pull, but nearly as soon as he thinks it he gets a funny idea in his head, one he can't shake. He has a brief skewed sense of alarm, like a missed step going down the narrow stairs on the bus, or a dropped note in front of a crowd, the kind that sets John glaring. 

Paul folds a hand into his pocket and shifts his weight, tossing his head once. The curl of hair falls back loose against his forehead.

John's not pretty and he's clearly not a bird but nonetheless George has the disconcerting feeling he knows who Paul is setting up to show off for. 

But Paul is his friend, Paul always includes him and sticks up for him, Paul isn't –

“Yeah?” Paul says, with a hitch of his eyebrows for emphasis, asking _How do I look?_

“...yeah,” George responds. Paul grins.

“Come on, then,” Paul says, opening the door, and George tails him down the stairs and into the canteen, to John.

ii) La Montaneta, Tenerife, Spain – April 1963 ;

Ringo's having a bit of a lie-in, hungover from the plane ride and the strong drinks they've been absenting from Klaus's parents' liquor cabinet, and George and Paul have been given the keys to Klaus's car. George had enthused over the car in a way that Klaus was too soft to resist, the same way he'd been too soft to resist Paul pressing him for an invite to his house on Tenerife. Since Klaus and Astrid were content that morning to read and sketch and drink coffee, draped out on the sun-drenched patio, rather than accompany them, Paul and George are alone. 

George had been eager to drive, but Paul had just wanted to leave the house, get out in hopes of getting out of his head, and so the two of them had set out into the foothills they could just see from Klaus's front door. They'd come to the decision somehow to take a walk, if only for something to do, something to ease Paul's restlessness, and are picking their way among the rocks and scrub in a gorge that looks like it may once have had a river. 

It's blindingly bright, just scorching, and Paul already has a plaster on his nose where the skin has blistered from too much sun. The landscape should be dotted with Berbers and camels or something, Paul thinks. There are dashed pits in the ground, marks left by the volcano or maybe just erosion; it makes him think of home, reminds him a little of the bombed out bits of Liverpool. “ _Where the Nasties boomed us_ ,” as John would say. 

Paul steps around a clutch of desert flowers, which look suitably exotic and melancholy, punched down by the sunshine. What, he wonders, is John saying now? Presumably he's lounging poolside with Brian; presumably he's doing God-knows-what – Paul can only guess, and none of his guesses are any good. He doesn't want to think about it. 

He tries to think instead of the bull fight they'd been to a few nights before – the way the crowd had roared, the sound of the bull's death groan, how it had frightened and sickened him so suddenly, so unexpectedly – but even that thought leads back to Brian and to John. It was Brian, after all, who had told them they _must_ see a bull fight...

George stops short up ahead of him. 

“Paul?” he asks. 

“Mmm,” Paul mutters, voice scratching a little from disuse, “Alright, George?”

Paul notices now that there are dark patches of sweat under George's armpits. 

“He shouldn't --” George hesitates, “ – he should not have gone. With Brian.”

Isn't it exactly like John to dominate their sparse conversation even when he isn't there? Paul doesn't particularly want to talk about this, or anything. He had been rather enjoying the quiet, the encompassing bigness of the desert even just on an island. 

“Well,” Paul says. He has the stupid urge to defend John, has to fight it off before conceding, “Well, it's a messy thing for the band, s'all...”

There's a silent moment. Paul feels the back of his neck with his hand – the heat is pulsing off of him. 

“No, I mean...it's not fair to you, is it?” George asks. He's turned to look at Paul, and even though Paul can't see his face for squinting against the sun, he knows how George must look, the familiar furrowed expression. 

George sounds tentative, “Or is it?”

“I dunno, really,” Paul says. George has him confused now too; he's not really sure what's being asked, only that it's something George isn't comfortable asking, and if Paul weren't already sweating he'd be sweating at that. 

“...is it or isn't it?” George says. Paul wishes he sounded churlish, but he sounds wistful instead, like he's speaking the very tail-end of a lament. 

“Isn't anything,” Paul says. He turns back toward the hint of trail they'd been meandering along; if they keep moving they won't have the breath to waste on talking. 

“Is it or isn't it?” George is saying again, urgent. 

“Christ, George, it doesn't have anything to do with fairness, alright? Leave off,” Paul says. This is the last thing he needs right now: if it's just like John to get himself invited on free holidays with their poncy fucking manager and only tell Paul about it right beforehand, it's just like George to push the point beyond Paul's patience to deal with it. 

“It has everything to do with fairness!” George says, insistent now, pressing steadily on towards genuine anger. “Sometimes I think...sometimes I think you'd let me go on forever, not knowing, not even knowing whether there's anything to know.”

George had come trotting out of Astrid's room that morning and _still_ hasn't seen fit to say a word about it to Paul, so Paul thinks these sudden police tactics are all a bit much. Paul was never even Stuart's friend, not like George was, and Paul would still never fuck his girl – and not just because he's never wanted Stuart's sloppy seconds. There are obviously new rules between them, all of them; yet again John has set the standard. Who is George to know what goes on between him and John? Who is George to him, or Stuart to George, or Brian to any of them? Who are they to know each others secrets? 

“I don't like you when you're like this,” Paul lets himself say, sour. 

“How would you like me, then?” George laughs darkly; it reverberates in the swollen heat of the desert, “On my knees? Or – it's you who does that for him, isn't it?”

Panic and anger clutch him in quick turns. If some part of Paul had expected this to come, a greater part of him had simply hoped that it never would, relying on a common understanding – a mutual dis-ease with an impossible subject – to keep the words at bay. 

He wishes John were here to deal with this; he could flatten the landscape and make it all so much easier to understand. What would John say? _Fuck off_ , or _bend over if you're so fucking interested_ , or maybe John would just hit him, bloody him to shut him up. But George would never have pressed John like this, and John's in fucking Barcelona anyway, and it's just Paul who has to say something.

“I'd like you to shut the fuck up,” Paul says, and he laughs but it's not at George or himself but at the absurdity of the situation – George and him in a stand-off in the desert, guns at the ready, arguing in circles about whether he and John are buggering each other, “But barring that, since that's obviously impossible, I'd like John here with my prick in his mouth, yeah.”

George's mouth is almost perfectly round just after his jaw drops; Paul wishes he hadn't left his camera back at the house, if only so he could show John the snapshot when they get back and watch John's mouth drop too, a perfect match for George's, when he learns what Paul's said. 

iii) Maida Vale Studios, London, England – July, 1963 ; 

Mal and Neil and Ringo have set off to stretch their legs and stock up on cigarettes during a brief break from their evening recording for the BBC, which leaves John, Paul and George to amuse themselves. They're chasing each other through the long back hallways behind Studio Five in between pelting each other with bits of paper torn from Paul's notebook. 

George and John tumble into the men's room, laughing uproariously, Paul at their heels. John manages to shut the door – _just barely_ \-- in Paul's face and turns to press his back against it to keep him out. He looks at George, gleeful and conspiring, and George starts to get that lovely little complicit rush, the feeling of being in on a joke. 

“Help me hold this,” John says, laughing, “He's much stronger than that face suggests.”

“Hey,” Paul hollers; he's twisting the door handle insistently. There's a _thwhack_ as he slaps his notebook against the door frame, “I heard that!”

George has to laugh when he pictures what Paul's face must look like, mouth twisting as he fights a smile. 

“Come back later!” John yells back, twisting around to press his eye to the gap in the door, “No left-handers allowed!”

“No – let me in, John, you tosser – come on, be good,” Paul says, with that funny hint of sternness in his tone. John straightens up slightly; George can practically see his ears pricking up. John laughs again and shakes his head, then he steps away from the door just as Paul gives it a hard push and topples into the little room.

“Alright, Paul?” John asks, innocently as can be, practically cherubic. 

“Alright, John,” Paul replies, and he steps over next to John to give him a good hard poke in the shoulder. John plays it up like he's been mortally wounded, grimacing and falling against Paul with exaggerated fervor, which sets Paul to giggling. George laughs too, at least until he starts to get the uncomfortable sense that this is – something. Something not-so-funny, not-so-friendly. 

Paul is posing himself into the corner of the tight bathroom, hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans over a jutting hip, his face arranged in an expression of coy artfulness. This isn't the first time George has wondered if Paul does this because he knows that John – Christ, it's weird to think of it – that John gets off on it, but watching the way John is watching Paul, gaze lapsed on him, it seems clear to George that John _likes_ being teased like this, though he wouldn't tolerate it from a girl by now. 

“I'm _injured_ ,” John says, and gives a little cough like he's got pleurisy, too.

“Oh, shush, you're alright,” Paul murmurs.

“I know how you could make it better,” John whispers back, and Paul is giggling in a way that is definitely flirtatious, and George knows the tips of his ears must be red. 

“Oh, really?” Paul says, and then drops his voice so that George can hardly hear it, “Do you want me to look at it?”

John chortles. 

“Come on, this is – this is a _bathroom_ ,” George says, which doesn't seem to help at all. John has the knuckles of his right hand up, grazing Paul's stomach, and George knows now that his whole face must be red. He repeats, “Come on, you can't! We've still got half the songs to do...”

“It'll help him sing _Clarabella_ – you've heard him today, he's all nervous and out of tune,” John says slyly, gaze still stuck to Paul. Paul shoves him again in protest, mutters “was not” under his breath, but there's no anger in it and he grins at John all the while. 

“We've – we've only been given 15 minutes,” George says. He feels like this line sounds better, more convincing, coming from Paul. Paul's ceded his role, though, swept up in whatever John sets off in him; George doesn't want to think about the details of it. 

“Well, that's all it takes,” John says, looking Paul up and down as Paul laughs, “Distract 'em for us.”

George can hear a cheery 'Ta!' from Paul as John takes him by the shoulder and pushes him out the door; George spins back around, ready to protest again, but is left facing the men's room sign as the door is shut firmly behind him. The lock clicks. 

He starts walking away but can hear the sound of Paul giggling through the door; he turns back and bangs on it. 

“Quiet down, I can hear you down the hall,” he says sharply. _Don't fuck this up for us – for yourselves_ , he doesn't say.

“Thanks, kid!” John calls out. Paul giggles again, and then George hears him gasp and murmur something, and then there's silence from the bathroom. 

George only hears the _clack_ of his boots as he walks back down the hall. Paul must have told John that George knows, that's all George can figure, because pretty soon after they'd gotten back from their holiday John had started acting like reaching over to pinch Paul's nipple was as normal as poking him in the side. George had wanted to know, of course, but he hadn't wanted to know the whole damned thing; he hadn't wanted to be left to make excuses for them as they make it with each other in some bathroom. He hadn't _expected_ to just be expected to deal with it, the same way he's expected to come up with a guitar riff at the drop of a hat. 

The friendly bloke from the BBC, Ian, looks inquisitively at him as he re-enters the studio. 

“Where're your mates?” he says. 

“They'll be – a minute,” George says, grabbing his guitar, trying to wipe the disgruntlement off his face, “D'you like Chet Atkins?”

Ian shrugs – none of this is his type of music, no matter how much he seems to like them – but George starts to play anyway. He can feel proud that his fingers find their place effortlessly, even if Paul and John aren't there to see it. 

iv) Southern Cross Hotel, Melbourne, Australia – 16 June, 1964 ; 

George has extracted a promise from one of their tour promoters that tomorrow afternoon can be spent tooling around in the bloke's MG in the desert outside of Melbourne, and so part of him is already daydreaming of it -- speed and freedom and a release from the maddening, hysterical crowds. Still, though, George has one eye on the party which continues unceasing around him; one eye on John and Paul and the girl they've got with them.

The girl is cute, tan in the way they had all hoped Australians would be. Her dress is floral, though, a little matronly; it makes George think of Mimi, sequestered a few floors above them, near Brian and a few select people from NEMS. A member of the hotel staff has been stationed outside the entrance to the Beatles' suite, ready to head Mimi off if she tries to approach. 

This is not a party George wants Mimi to see, any more than he would want his own mother to see it. 

The disc jockey from the local station who had finagled an invite from John that morning on the telephone is there; John got him to take a handful of pills when he showed up and now the guy is on-edge, talking rapidly to yet another girl who keeps an eye on whichever Beatle is nearest. Mal is shuffling girls and buckets of ice and fancy little sandwiches into and out of their suite, laughing and joking with everyone who approaches him for anything. 

Paul and John are huddled together on the couch, chatting up this girl though they seem only vaguely interested in her. The indifference is becoming increasingly familiar; George knows that all of them have been turned upside down by the constant availability of girls, their appetites distended by it. Paul's drunk enough that he has one thigh nudged up on top of John's, a hand curled on his shoulder. A few more drinks and George wonders if Paul'll be crawling right into John's lap, pawing at his shirt – he'd done it once in a hotel room somewhere in Dorset, right in front of George, and then muttered a _Christ-wasn't-I-drunk_ apology the next day. 

“It's my birthday on Thursday, y'know,” Paul says to the girl, mock serious. Paul used to flirt with girls but he only really bothers to flirt with cameras and John now; George supposes it's more efficient this way, and the end is the same. 

“I know,” the girl giggles in a way that makes George feel sorry for her, “They've got a contest going in the newspaper -- girls can enter for a chance to meet you at your birthday party.”

“Well, you've met us now, haven't you? No contest necessary,” John says, “And aren't _you_ lucky, what a swell time it's been.”

“Do you know what I want for my birthday?” Paul asks as the girl giggles at John's sardonic half-joke. George can't see the girl's face but can imagine how eager-to-please she must look, if the way her shoulders have jumped is any indication.

“No, I don't,” she chirps. 

Paul lowers his voice but not enough; George can hear him clearly over the sounds of the other guests and the noise of three discordant transistor radios, each tuned to a different station. Maybe only he can hear it, though – maybe it's just because he knows Paul's voice too well, can pick it out of the screams of thousands. 

“I want you to suck his cock,” Paul says, and it's always amazing how he can say the most wicked things while looking as pure as anything, “Will you do that for my birthday?”

George hasn't looked up Australia's statutes on buggery, hasn't had reason to consider it, but he ponders now on the wisdom of pulling stunts like this in a former fucking penal colony. The girl could be the cossetted daughter of some prominent local politician, and here Paul is auditioning her for a background role in his and John's sexual Bacchanalia. 

George looks around at the disc jockey, but he doesn't appear to have heard, anyway; he's as unconcerned as he was earlier when he definitely _had_ heard Ringo tell a different girl that he would only sign an autograph for her if he could do it on her stomach – with his cum.

Looking back at the pair of them, George can see a wide grin forming on John's face. The girl giggles again but if she responds he can't hear it; it doesn't really matter what exactly she says. Maybe she'll blush and demur for a while, but George knows that Paul could talk just about any girl into anything, even well before their little band was a _worldwide phenomenon_. Even in Hamburg, even baked into his leathers from the stage lights, brined in sweat and beer and worse, the girls would coo over Paul. 

George considers loping over to them, telling them that this hardly sounds like a birthday present for Paul, anyway. But then he wonders if he knows what Paul will be getting, if he can see it in the laxness of John's body, the way his hips are tilted towards Paul. 

George shakes his head to clear it, instead, and decides he should round up a girl for himself. 

v) Abbey Road Studios, London, England – 21 June, 1966 ; 

John had called Paul up the night before, telling him that they had a last song for the album, not to worry. But when he'd sat down in the studio earlier for John to play the song to him, thinking they might work through the last little bits, an _ahh_ here or a beat there or some little surprise of melody, countering against the main, George had come up and bent over the lyric sheet; it was then that Paul noticed that whole sections of it were in George's handwriting. 

The session had been tripping steadily downhill from there. 

“Paul, let George try the bass on this one,” John says, authoritative. His expression is cruddy -- coarse and knowing and solipsistic -- in a way Paul hates. John doesn't have his glasses on so he's squinting, he's looking down his nose at Paul, perched up on a stool with his cans around his neck. It's not the look of sweet befuddled myopia, the baffled haplessness that always pushes Paul to hook a hand around his elbow and steer him through crowds and across stages, but arrogance. Paul hates to think it; he wants John mellow and suggestive, eloquent in every way.

The studio feels stifling with the summer heat and there are sweat-darkened curls of hair on John's forehead that make Paul's mouth tense. He wants to brush the hair off John's forehead but John is acting like a _shit_. 

' _You're making me feel'_ , Paul thinks; the thought stutters and repeats, ' _you're making me feel like I've never been born._ '

“No, I'll play it,” Paul says, ticking out the words, “Once you hear all of it together you'll know it works.”

“No,” John says, _no no no, you're wrong..._

“John, just let me – you'll see,” Paul's voice is niggling, needling. He hears Ringo cough, uneasy, from where he's fussing with his tea on the other side of the studio. 

George has gone up to the control booth to chat with George Martin and Geoff, and Paul is uncomfortably aware that he or maybe all three of them are up there watching through the window as Paul and John have some stupid lover's quarrel about _nothing_ on the floor of the studio. He wants to look up and check if they're watching but he doesn't: he knows it will make John think he's on his back foot, always wary of drawing a crowd. He mulls whether their spectators can read it all, everything – in the slope of his shoulders, in the spread of John's legs as he sits on the stool, the soft unconscious hand with which Paul has already caught himself reaching out for John. 

“No. The only way I can get the sound I want out of it is to give it to George to play,” John says. He's unyielding, still, stone-faced and Paul hates it. 

“Tell me...here, hum how you want it, why don't you? We'll try it both ways,” Paul says. His back teeth hurt; he can feel an ache in his jaw. They have _a_ day to finish the album and just when they need to focus John is yanking the stitches out. 

“I don't – I don't _want_ it both ways, _Paul_. You won't do it like I want, so I'll just have to have George do it – at least he's willing to try something new,” John says, frustration finally kicking into his words. 

And that's it, Paul finally knows what this is actually about – it isn't just about the fucking song, it's about the acid too, about John not knowing when to fucking quit. 

Last time Paul was at Weybridge, Cynthia had taken him aside before letting him climb the stairs to their bedroom to wake John up. She'd whispered even though they might as well have been alone in the huge house, her voice urgent in a way that had made something akin to fear trickle through him. 

“ _He's..._ ,” Cyn had said, “ _He'll spend hours, not saying a word to me or Julian. Just staring at nothing. I – I thought you would want to know..._ ”

George hastens down the steps to rejoin them, which is just – somehow – infuriating. Poor Cyn is whispering and worrying around the edges of this growing problem, and Paul is trying to subtly put the brakes on it, and here's George – encouraging it, acting like he and John are founding members of the most exclusive, enlightened club on earth. It's the prellies all over again, John and George gulping them down by the handful and acting like Paul is the most bored, boring person they could ever meet 'cause he can think of better things to do than cracking his skull open and seeing what comes out. 

The incredible thing is, what George is refusing to see, somehow, is that it won't last. Once John's done playing whatever game this is, putting them through their paces to prove they love him, he'll sicken of it. And while Paul knows he can forgive John for this, knows that can't be helped, he's not so sure he'll want to do the same for George. 

George picks up his right-handed bass and it's – fuck – Paul was still talking to John, he hadn't fucking rolled over yet, but George is acting like it's preordained. 

“Hey, man – am I not here? Am I fucking dead or something, and I don't know it? _I'm_ playing it, George!” Paul snarls; the ferocity of his response almost catches him but he goes with it, figures George deserves it anyway. 

George starts to say “Fuck off, you've played lead --” but John is yelling at the same time, a mess of sound, something like, “George will play the bass on it because _I said so_!”

Paul wheels around to face John again, dismissing George with a backwards wave. 

“Oh, fuck you – you're ridiculous, you're acting like a fucking child!” he shouts at John, ready to yell now because John already had.

For a moment, absurdly, he feels like they are back in Hamburg, screaming insults off the stage to an equally belligerent audience. In Paul's peripheral vision, George shrugs and goes to fiddle with his amp. 

John grins, smug as hell for having caught Paul out, and says there's a tambourine Paul could play if he wants to, though they'll probably wipe it from the final mix. 

Paul's so angry his blood feels thick with it. If he were to play the damned bass line now his hands would be shaking, it would be a mess; but then if John would just allow him to play it, his hands wouldn't be shaking at all. 

Paul wants to drive fast all the way back to Liverpool, sit in the back garden at his dad's house and smoke until he can calm down. He wants to pull John into the bathroom and shake him, grab him by the collar and push him against the wall. He wants to drag him back to his house and pin him against the mattress, touch the thin skin covering his ribs as he squirms beneath him, have John's hands fluttering against the muscles in his shoulders and feel his thighs tremble as Paul takes him. 

George Martin gets on the talkback speaker. 

“Paul,” he says; he's using a tone of voice that he usually reserves for John, the one that says _calm down, see reason._

Paul waves his hand up towards the control room, brushing him off. He doesn't want to hear it right now; even his actual father would be hard-pressed to steady him. John, of course, could do it in a clever word or two if he chose, but Paul knows that will come later, only after John has had enough.

Paul strides over to George, busy fussing with his guitar strap and forming silent chords by turns, avoiding Paul's eyes. 

“I hope you're enjoying this – this moment,” Paul says, leaning over so only George can hear him, and he hates the way he stutters over the words, the bite taken out of them, “the two of you.”

He grabs his Rickenbacker on the way out but leaves the Hofner for Neil or Mal or whoever to pack for the tour. In three nights or a week, when John's trying to crawl into his bed in some darkened hotel room, Paul knows he'll let him, but for now he lets his anger pace him home.

vi) #7 Cavendish Avenue, London, England – July or August, 1967 ; 

George leaves John and Paul to finish off the last of the joint so he can take a piss. He's _very stoned_ , he thinks with a pleased, hazy sort of otherness -- Paul always has the best weed. 

He can hear the last strains of the Monkee's newest song filter in through the bathroom door. _'That's us! The four kings of EMI -- not half, eh?'_ John had shouted when they'd first heard it, and they'd all grinned at each other, amused and conspiratorial and chuffed by the gesture, even though George generally thought they could stand to be a little less famous, most of the time. One minute you're sitting on the floor at a party and the next you're immortalized in a song – for the twelve dozenth hundredth time or something, probably, but George can still find it exciting. 

It's just the three of them, Paul and John and George, now; John Dunbar and his new girl had been there earlier in the evening, along with a few more of that crowd, Paul's friends who George only knows tangentially. Ringo hadn't come tonight – Maureen's in the last stages of her pregnancy, big and getting bigger, and Ringo is getting increasingly hesitant to leave her at home. 

Pattie and Jenny left hours ago, headed back to the clubs. They hadn't fought about it but George had wanted to, kind of; at least until John ( _of all people_ ) had clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, _'Let her go, man, just think – one for three and three for one,'_ and that held-out promise had seemed so enticing that George _had_ let her go.

George is home too much for Pattie or not enough, it seems. They can't find a happy medium now that the touring is over; he's glad to be done with shows but it does leave more time for he and Pattie to pick fights with each other. He'd had, he realizes now, the vague idea when they married that they would make each other happy – he's not sure if its a mark of maturity or childishness to now think it's not his job to make her happy, that you can't ever really make somebody happy. 

George comes back from the bathroom and finds Paul pressed back against the doorway to his kitchen; John's face is not visible to George but Paul's is. His eyes are closed and John has a hand up, paused against the side of Paul's neck. 

He's not sure if he should cough, or back out of the room and knock the Magritte in the hallway off the wall to alert them, or if he should just drive home and leave them be. They know he knows and he knows they know that he knows, but beyond that moment with Paul in the foothills of the volcano in Tenerife they've never really acknowledged it non-jokingly, not really. George can't even say for sure whether they acknowledge it to each other, or if they just fuck and then dance around the subject incessantly. 

“Oh...,” John says, and it's George's breath that catches, not Paul's, as John's thumb charts the line of Paul's jaw, “I'm a fool for you...”

The line is knowingly overwrought, like he's repurposed it from the off-guard hero of some film noir, and his tone has a certain wryness to it, but something about the scene still makes George feel slow, stupefied. This is a side to their relationship that he is rarely privy to – certainly never to this extent, hearing John sound almost hypnotically tender. It's something he has heretofore only been allowed to glimpse sidelong.

“John...,” Paul murmurs. He really does look achingly beautiful now, his face relaxed and lissome and enthralling. He's not playing cute or playing dumb, and for once he looks to George as beautiful as he is always said to be. The thought feels sacrilegious, trivializing, but he can't unthink it: Paul looks for this moment like he's reached some sort of enlightenment. 

Then Paul opens his eyes; he spots George over John's shoulder immediately, but though George braces for an awkward shift in mood, for the sense that he has been made into a voyeur, it doesn't come. He's on the outside of their pairing but it doesn't make him feel jealous or looked over, at least not now. Instead he just feels permeated with affection for them – even for what they are to each other. 

“Otis...,” Paul says with a comical reverence, breaking the spell. He gestures into the air and George realizes they've swapped the record while he was in the bathroom. _Day Tripper_ will be the next track, and Paul and John will shush him so they can hear it and be reminded of how great they are once again, but for now there's just Otis, singing about soft words, spoken so gentle.

George goes to sit down and prepare another joint; Paul and John move towards the couch, a loose unit, and John stretches out across it, his feet nestled in Paul's lap. The three of them relax in unweighted silence as George rolls it and lights it, passing it over to Paul after he inhales. Minutes roll by, easy and insubstantial. 

“I have a song I want to play for you,” George says, “Some time when you've a moment.”

Paul spreads his hands out, a quintessential welcome, “There's a right-hander upstairs, y'know – John's...”

George smiles, fond: only Paul would be ready to work at this time of night and at this level of inebriation. He's already thinking of the next album, and the one after that. 

“No, I haven't worked it out on guitar yet,” George replies. He can be satisfied by the eagerness of Paul's reply, the interest he'd shown, without needing to get into it now. 

“Mmm,” Paul says, pulling off the joint, “I've noticed you're writing everything on keyboards these days.”

Paul would notice something like that – of course it's the little things he reads significance into, and not always at opportune times. George shrugs.

“What about your sitar?” Paul asks, passing the still-smoldering joint back to George. He contemplates how to answer – the whole thing has been so discouraging lately and he doesn't really want to talk about it. But Paul looks open and meditative and lovely, pristine at the center of John's world, and thereby the world generally, and George figures there's no one else to understand it better than Paul. 

“I just...it's like, the more I practiced, the more I realized that I will never be able to play it the way I can hear it in my head,” George says. He exhales a cloud of smoke and hands the weed back. 

“Anything is possible,” Paul replies quickly, and it's not quite comforting, if he intends it to be. He must glimpse the cross look on George's face, though, because he adds, “You're the best guitarist in the best group in the world, mate, believe me.”

“Hear, hear!” John mutters, his eyes opening long enough to fix upon George, half-lidded. George had pegged him as asleep fifteen minutes before, but he must have just been content to let their conversation float around him. 

Them saying it could almost make George believe it; Paul and John have this peculiar way of talking things into being. It's a form of Beatle magic, and even he finds himself enchanted with it sometimes – he supposes it's why he's followed them so far. 

Paul takes a deep drag and passes the joint back to George, bypassing John entirely. George notices a well-thumbed copy of that stupid book John had once gotten him to read, way back home in Liverpool, lying on the side table (George'd lied that he'd read the whole thing – a _plant_ taking over the world or something, he couldn't make it ten pages). 

“Is John...,” he starts to say, and then feels very stoned and slow, mesmerized by the way Paul's thumb drifts in circles, stroking John's ankle, “is John staying with you?”

It's not like the two of them have ever been distant, of course not, but now with Paul ensconced in his own house and Jane's presence mostly felt these days in the drapery she'd chosen months before, they seem to be more wrapped up in each other than ever. They show up at the studio together and leave together nearly every day. 

“D' _you_ think he's fit to go home?” Paul laughs, gesturing at John's pliant form; his hand drops to John's thigh. The combination of movement and response are somehow sobering. 

George thinks that Paul knows what the question actually was, that he's just deflecting. He wants to ask who John is supposed to be husband to, after all, because he knows John can't be spending more than two nights a week in the same house as Cynthia, let alone the same bed. But it would be a stupid question, turning Paul sour-faced and guilty, or worse, coy or blushing, as if that were something to think of, in this universe. He wants to tell Paul to be careful, but even if he could say it Paul wouldn't hear it. 

“Do the girls notice?” George asks. He can't see them out this window, not over the height of the gate, but he knows they are clustered out there no matter what hour of the day it is. When he leaves they will crowd the front of his car. 

What was cute in _Help!_ would not be cute in real life, George thinks – the two of them living in a house together while John's wife and son and everything sensible drift away. Surely even Paul and Paul's stubbornness must recognize this. It's always been Paul's job to rein in John's worst impulses, not to indulge them. George glances back out the window; the sky outside looks leaden. 

“What's to notice?” Paul arches an eyebrow at him, stubbing out the joint, “From their perspective it's two for the price of one, innit?”

He grins at George, calm and confident and cocksure, and for a moment George lets himself believe him. 

vii) New York City and Woodstock, New York, USA – November, 1968 ; 

Paul gets a postcard from George and Mal in Los Angeles two days before he flies to see Linda in New York. 

“Dear Paul,” it reads, “Had to give Capitol a 'DAMN GOOD WHACKING' (per Louise) over the mix -- believe it? Headed to see B.D. now. See you afterwords, soon. HARE KRISHNA, Hari”

And a small comment from Mal, beside a little looped drawing of a flower:

“Sinatra bought us drinks! not as good as Elvis ELVIS!! but still very good, xx Mal”

A few days later, and Paul's left alone in Linda's little apartment, waiting for her to get back from walking Heather to school. He's sipping tea – they'd bought a tea kettle the first day he was there, quibbling over who would pay for it, the impasse settled only because he wasn't carrying any cash on him – when the phone rings and Mal's steady, loping voice is on the line. 

“Oh, it is you, Paul!” he says, “We had to call over to the office to get the number, but Bob said he didn't mind the charges.”

Paul laughs, genuinely and openly, at the idea of Mal minding Bob's sure surfeit of pennies, and he can hear Mal giggling back on the other end. 

“Well, George wanted me to call you, and – hey! – he's grabbing for the phone now. Bye, Paul!” Mal says, and Paul has just has time to get out a 'Bye!' before George is greeting him. The 'hullo, yes, how are you?' is practically perfunctory; George has something he wants to get to. 

“I have to tell you, I've met some of Bob's people, y'know, and, uh – some of them know Yoko,” George says. Paul's heart sinks; he had almost managed to trick himself into believing a world beyond Linda and Heather and the quiet little domestic life they'd shared with him no longer existed. Even walking through Chinatown he'd not hardly thought of it. 

Paul sighs, which George seems to take as enough of a response. 

“No one has anything good to say about her, Paul...it's – it's fucking worrying, this, can't you see it? You need to tell him – Paul, Christ, he'll listen to you. You've got to _make him listen_ ,” George says. There's a hurried desperation in his voice that makes Paul feel tense, haggard. A summer and autumn spent tiptoeing around this shit has left his bones aching; he falls into bed at night exhausted, shaking with it, and still can't sleep. He knows that this purgatory will end, that John will tire of it one way or another, but he doesn't know how long he can wait it out, hanging onto John with bloodied nails. 

“He won't listen...George, you don't understand...I --” Paul says, and falls silent. His mind scutters, blank; then he thinks of John, smiling into a kiss, and the loss feels unbounded, unboundable. 

“He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know, right?” George says, laughing joylessly.

The words are familiar but Paul can't place them.

“What is that from?” he asks.

“It's...,” George starts to say, then, “Forget about it. Christ. It obviously doesn't matter.”

Paul hears a click and then the dial tone. It's only minutes later, running them down in his mind, that he realizes they're George's words, from that song they'd never gotten around to. He tries to remember the next verse but he can't. 

viii) Brookfield House, Surrey, England – 12 January, 1969 ; 

George and Paul are sitting slumped at Ringo's dining room table while Ringo and Neil make frantic phone calls to John, trying to rouse him to make it to the meeting. He'd agreed to meet the day before – a last ditch effort to keep George's walk-out from becoming permanent -- but John has always been changeable, and now whether he remembers an agreement from one day to the next is completely up in the air.

George hears Paul sigh; glancing over, he can see the rough way Paul drags his fingers through his hair, scrapes at his scalp.

“I don't know where we can go from here, honestly,” George says. Paul doesn't answer.

Even the papers have caught whispers of it; Apple is a sinking ship, has sprung leaks. Beatle George and Beatle John, two of the four heads of the beast, come to blows – at least according to the press. 

They hadn't actually, but it'd been close, glaring at each other over the tables in the EMI canteen.

 _“Do you talk anymore, or do you let her do all the talking for you, these days?”_ George had asked, mid-way through the argument; John had jumped up in fury but he'd seemed winded by his vehemence once he got to his feet, confused. Yoko had just smiled – that was what George figured he'd remember most, Yoko smiling, looking sanctified by his anger.

John had agreed not to bring her today. 

Paul stands up suddenly from his chair and goes to pace in tight circles next to the window. Paul is now somehow even more unknowable than John or Yoko, George thinks. He speaks in riddles these days, like he is always chasing a circuitous route, grappling for what he cannot communicate. He'll shrug and gesture in a way that only obscures his meaning. John used to poke fun at the way Paul would talk with his hands, George remembers; it feels stupid to get nostalgic over something so recent, but then those moments seem irretrievably gone, anyway. 

Sometimes Paul will be talking about the film with Michael and Michael will look over at George, as if just to track if anyone else can understand a word Paul says. It's maybe a mark of how things have been turned on end, now: Michael should know how weird Paul can be – he'd been there to film their _Paperback Writer_ promos, angling the camera at Paul's request to get clear shots of his broken tooth -- but even he is taken aback by Paul's demeanor recently. Paul simply seems spun out, unraveled. 

_'You're still the prettiest, Paul, don't worry,'_ George remembered John saying after Paul had broken his tooth, punched it clear through his lip. He'd darted his forefinger out to trace the stitches in Paul's upper lip as he said it. 

Watching Paul pace at the window, George tries to remember when he last loved him – really loved him, rather than feeling stuck to him or annoyed by him or sorry for him – and for a second he can't. But then a moment recreates itself in his mind, roughly: the four of them had been jostling each other, unmoored in the back of a refrigerated van, when Paul had finally given up on touring. 'I agree,' he'd said out of nowhere, evidently continuing a conversation from days before, 'This is _shit_. This is not a thing worth doing.' George had been so grateful for that, for all of them being on the same page again; when Paul gave up on something, all of them could. 

He supposes he resents Paul now for failing to control John; resents him more for not giving up.

If John and Paul's partnership had been born in an instant, an exchange of glances across the church hall, or whatever it was, it could not seem to die in one – or rather, Paul would not let it die. He was holding onto the thing with his teeth even while John played dead. 

Maybe it's just Paul's ego that won't allow him to concede that he's lost. 

George drove up to his parents' house after leaving Twickenham two days before; Pattie had left to stay with her mum after she'd stormed out the previous week, and his parents' house was the only place he could think to go that wasn't empty. He'd let his mother hold his hand and comfort him. 

“Should we make a bet, you think? Whether John will show?” George asks, rapping his fingers on the table. 

Paul walks back over to the table and slumps back down in the chair across from him. At last his hands and arms are idle.

“Well, it's just – the whole thing's fucked, gone to shit -- ” Paul says, grimacing – the statement has nothing whatsoever to do with what George had asked, “We've got no songs to speak of...”

George feels a jolt of disappointment and of surprise, which is in itself surprising – it shows he still cares, even when he thought he couldn't any more. How many songs has he brought to these already interminable sessions? All have ended up the same; whatever scrap of interest Paul shows in them is lost when it becomes clear that John couldn't care less. They'll sing nonsense songs to each other, shout “Judy Garland!” back and forth as if that'll make a worthwhile tune, but can't be bothered to work on _All Things Must Pass_ with any seriousness. 

_I I, Me Me, Mine_ – Paul had written that bridge, tossed it off like it was nothing; if he'd shown a moment of self-awareness over it, George hadn't seen it. 

“What happened...,” George says, clearing his throat. “Between you two?” 

Paul picks at a hangnail. His poker face just looks pathetic now, George thinks; he can arrange his expression to convey disinterest but his eyes and nose are perpetually red, like he's just gotten back from a surreptitious cry. He looks like shit all the time, they all do. George can see a dark bloody patch on Paul's lip where he's been tearing at it with his teeth. 

“Nothing,” Paul says, finally. 

It's maddening. Suddenly George is furious, just fucking furious with the whole thing – he's here and John is not and yet Paul is still treating him as though he is on the outside of some secret fucking circle. Ten years and he's still at the perimeter, Paul lying blithely to his face about things he has every right to know. 

“You're really something, you know,” he says; he can feel his lip turning, feel himself scowling, “Are you ever honest with anyone at all? Ever?”

Paul crosses his legs; folds over, hunched, on top of them. He says nothing.

George needs to get outside, go for a drive or something. His throat aches. He feels like he has aged a decade in a year but is no wiser for it. _I was so much younger then, I'm older than that now_ – but that's wrong, George thinks, reversed – all the wonder torn out of it. 

He has to look away from Paul; he's not sure he wants to see whatever emotions might play across Paul's face.

“It's what didn't happen. Is the thing. That's what happened,” Paul says. The riddles, again. 

Ringo ducks his head in the door.

“John's here,” he states. George hears Paul exhale, though if it's an expression of relief or anxiety George can't tell anymore.

Ringo coughs awkwardly, looks between the two of them, then says, “He's brought Yoko.”

A minute later and John files in with Yoko scarcely a centimeter behind; he hardly looks at them, and ends up saying even less. George gives it five minutes, listening to Yoko, before he can't stand it anymore.

“Will you say something? Do you have anything at all to say to us?” George asks John. 

John blinks, frowns, shakes his head dismissively, “I don't understand you.”

“I don't _believe_ you,” George says, too angry to even shout; he leaves when John can only shrug in return. 

ix) Ascot Sound Studios, Berkshire, England – June 1971;

“Wish he were here to play this...,” John mumbles, chomping on his gum and frowning down at his hands as he flubs the piano segment for the fourth or fifth time.

George wants to ask _who? Beatle Ed?_ but he doesn't want to lend credence to the statement, doesn't want to raise the dead. 

_Those freaks was right_ , and all that.

It's strange -- George has only ever visited Tittenhurst once in Paul's company, but he still expects to see him around every corner, fussing over John and bossing George around and talking at Ringo. 

George doesn't want to think about Paul unless he has to, in court or at a board meeting or something, but John can't seem to shut up about him recently. George had finally suggested a bonfire of every _Ram_ copy they can steal from the Apple offices, he's so sick of hearing about it – sick of _hearing_ it, whether on the radio or sung under John's breath – sick every time he sees the homespun cover, _Paulus domesticus_ , and has to think of the unsubtle 'fuck you, John' on the back. But knowing Paul, it was actually a 'get fucked', wrapped in a 'remember this? You won't forget it', and doubtless doubling back to a 'quit fucking me!'

Just like Paul to throw sexual taunts at John, and deliver them right next to pictures of his wife and children. Just like pretty, wide-eyed Paul, to pretend at gormlessness, covering the deepest, nastiest messages with a veneer of pastoral pleasantry. 

Just like Paul to _sue you_ and then blame you for it – like he's doing it for your own good, and you're just too daft to understand it. 

George hasn't actually spoken to Paul without lawyers present in ages, not since their disastrous meeting in New York the winter before, just before the lawsuit was filed. They'd had time to chat a little before business and Klein and Apple had seeped into the conversation; just a little time to relearn each other, before the shouting had started. Paul had talked about his daughters and the lambs that had been born on his farm that spring, how tame they were – probably still are, though George can't know now. For about five minutes then George had been able to remember Paul as he'd once been, just the chubby kid on the bus who'd gaped, wide-eyed and open-mouthed and gleeful, when he'd seen the margins of George's notebook, how George had filled them with shaky sketches of guitars.

“Get Nicky to do it, then, if you can't,” George says to John now, just for something to cover the awkward silence, the absent presence. 

“Wouldn't be the same at all, would it?” John asks, turning to George, bleary-eyed behind his glasses and looking doleful. 

For right now, just for right now, George misses Paul terribly, if only because he would know how to bluff his way through all this.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs mentioned/referenced include: Clarabella, I Me Mine, and She Said She Said by the Beatles, Alternate Title/Randy Scouse Git by the Monkees, Try a Little Tenderness and Day Tripper by Otis Redding, My Back Pages by Bob Dylan, Circles and All Things Must Pass by George, How Do You Sleep and How by John (How is just what I picture John playing in the last bit, idk). The book referred to is The Day of the Triffids, which John evidently loved from childhood.
> 
> My tumblr is also roundthatcorner, so follow me there, that would be cool!


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